Afroasiatic languages

Afroasiatic (Afro-Asiatic), also known as Afrasian and traditionally

Afroasiatic
as Hamito-Semitic (Chamito-Semitic)[3] or Semito-Hamitic,[4] is a
large language family of about 300 languages and dialects.[5] It Geographic Horn of Africa, North Africa,
includes languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, distribution Sahel, West Asia
the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel. Linguistic One of the world's primary
classification language families
Afroasiatic languages have over 350 million native speakers, the
Proto-language Proto-Afroasiatic
fourth largest number of any language family (after Indo-European,
Sino-Tibetan and Niger–Congo).[6] The phylum has six branches: Subdivisions Berber
Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic and Semitic. Chadic
Cushitic
By far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language is Arabic. A
language within the Semitic branch, it includes Modern Standard Egyptian
Arabic as well as spoken colloquial varieties. Arabic has around 290 Omotic[1]
million native speakers, who are concentrated primarily in West Asia, Semitic
North Africa and the Horn of Africa.[7]
ISO 639-2 / 5 afa

Other widely spoken Afroasiatic languages include: Glottolog afro1255[2]

Hausa (Chadic branch), the dominant language of northern

Nigeria, Ghana, and southern Niger, spoken as a first
language by over 27 million people and used as alingua
franca by another 20 million across West Africa and the
Sahel[8]
Oromo (Cushitic branch), spoken inEthiopia and Kenya by
around 33 million people total
Amharic (Semitic branch), spoken in Ethiopia, with over 25
million native speakers in addition to millions of other
Ethiopians speaking it as a second language
Somali (Cushitic branch), spoken by 15 million people in
Somalia, Djibouti, eastern Ethiopia and northeastern Kenya
Hebrew (Semitic branch), spoken by around 9 million Distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages; pale
people in Israel and worldwide [9]
yellow signifies areas without any languages in
Tigrinya (Semitic branch), spoken by around 6.9 million that family
people in Eritrea and Ethiopia
Kabyle (Berber branch), spoken by around 5 million people inAlgeria.
Central Atlas Tamazight (Berber branch), spoken by around 2.49 million people inMorocco[10]
Neo-Aramaic languages(Semitic branch), spoken by about 550,000 people worldwide. [11] This is not just one
language — It includes a number ofsubdivisions, with Assyrian Neo-Aramaic being the most spoken variety
(232,300).[12]
In addition to languages spoken today, Afroasiatic includes several important ancient languages, such asAncient Egyptian, Akkadian,
Biblical Hebrew and Old Aramaic. It is debated when and where the original homeland of the Afroasiatic family existed. Proposed
locations include North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Eastern Sahara and the
Levant.

Contents
Etymology
Distribution and branches
 Classification history
Subgrouping
Position among the world's languages
Date of Afroasiatic
Afroasiatic Urheimat
Similarities in grammar and syntax
Shared vocabulary
Etymological bibliography
See also
References
Bibliography
External links

Etymology
During the early 1800s, linguists grouped the Berber, Cushitic and Egyptian languages within a "Hamitic" phylum, in
acknowledgement of these languages' genetic relation with each other and with those in the Semitic phylum.[13] The terms "Hamitic"
and "Semitic" were etymologically derived from the Book of Genesis, which describes various Biblical tribes descended from Ham
and Shem, two sons of Noah.[14] By the 1860s, the main constituent elements within the broader Afroasiatic family had been worked
out.[13]

The scholar Friedrich Müller introduced the name "Hamito-Semitic" for the entire family in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft
(1876).[15] Maurice Delafosse (1914) later coined the term "Afroasiatic" (often now spelled "Afro-Asiatic"). However, it did not
come into general use until Joseph Greenberg (1950) formally proposed its adoption. In doing so, Greenberg sought to emphasize the
[15]
fact that Afroasiatic spanned the continents of both Africa and Asia.

Individual scholars have also called the family "Erythraean" (Tucker 1966) and "Lisramic" (Hodge 1972). In lieu of "Hamito-
Semitic", the Russian linguist Igor Diakonoff later suggested the term "Afrasian", meaning "half African, half Asiatic", in reference
[16]
to the geographic distribution of the family's constituent languages.

The term "Hamito-Semitic" remains in use in the academic traditions of some European countries.

Distribution and branches

The Afroasiatic language family is usually considered to include the
following branches:

Berber
Chadic
Cushitic
Egyptian
Omotic
Semitic
Although there is general agreement on these six families, there are Interrelations between branches of Afroasiatic
some points of disagreement among linguists who study Afroasiatic. (Lipiński 2001)

In particular:

The Omotic language branch is the most controversial member of Afroasiatic, because the grammatical formatives
that most linguists have given greatest weight in classifying languages in the family "are either absent or distinctly
wobbly" (Hayward 1995). Greenberg (1963) and others considered it a subgroup of Cushitic, whereas others have
[1]
raised doubts about it being part of Afroasiatic at all (e.g. Theil 2006).
 The Afroasiatic identity ofOngota is also broadly
questioned, as is its position within Afroasiatic among
those who accept it, due to the "mixed" appearance of the
language and a paucity of research and data.Harold
Fleming (2006) proposes that Ongota constitutes a
separate branch of Afroasiatic.[17] Bonny Sands (2009)
believes the most convincing proposal is by Savà and
Tosco (2003), namely that Ongota is an EastCushitic
language with a Nilo-Saharan substratum. In other words,
it would appear that the Ongota people once spoke a Nilo-
Saharan language but then shifted to speaking a Cushitic
language but retained some characteristics of their earlier
Nilo-Saharan language.[1] Some linguists' proposals for grouping within
Beja is sometimes listed as a separate branch of Afroasiatic
Afroasiatic but is more often included in the Cushitic
branch, which has a high degree of internal diversity .
Whether the various branches of Cushitic actually form a
language family is sometimes questioned, but not their inclusion in Afroasiatic itself.
There is no consensus on the interrelationships of the five non-Omotic branches of Afroasiatic (see § Subgrouping
below). This situation is not unusual, even among long-established language families: there are also many
disagreements concerning the internal classification of theIndo-European languages, for instance.
Meroitic has been proposed as an unclassified Afroasiatic language, because it shares the phonotactics
characteristic of the family, but there is not enough evidence to secure a classification.

Classification history
In the 9th century, the Hebrew grammarian Judah ibn Quraysh of Tiaret in Algeria was the first to link two branches of Afroasiatic
together; he perceived a relationship between Berber and Semitic. He knew of Semitic through his study of Arabic, Hebrew, and
Aramaic.

In the course of the 19th century, Europeans also began suggesting such relationships. In 1844, Theodor Benfey suggested a language
family consisting of Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic (calling the latter "Ethiopic"). In the same year, T.N. Newman suggested a
relationship between Semitic and Hausa, but this would long remain a topic of dispute and uncertainty
.

Friedrich Müller named the traditional Hamito-Semitic family in 1876 in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft ("Outline of
Linguistics"), and defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he
excluded the Chadic group. It was the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) who restricted Hamitic to the non-Semitic
languages in Africa, which are characterized by a grammatical gender system. This "Hamitic language group" was proposed to unite
various, mainly North-African, languages, including the Ancient Egyptian language, the Berber languages, the Cushitic languages,
the Beja language, and the Chadic languages. Unlike Müller, Lepsius considered that Hausa and Nama were part of the Hamitic
group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments. Both authors used the skin-color,
mode of subsistence, and other characteristics of native speakers as part of their arguments that particular languages should be
grouped together.[18]

In 1912, Carl Meinhof published Die Sprachen der Hamiten ("The Languages of the Hamites"), in which he expanded Lepsius's
model, adding the Fula, Maasai, Bari, Nandi, Sandawe and Hadza languages to the Hamitic group. Meinhof's model was widely
supported into the 1940s.[18] Meinhof's system of classification of the Hamitic languages was based on a belief that "speakers of
Hamitic became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with essentially Caucasian origins, intrinsically different from and
superior to the 'Negroes of Africa'."[19] But, in the case of the so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages (a concept he introduced), it was
based on the typological feature of gender and a "fallacious theory of language mixture." Meinhof did this although earlier work by
scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston had substantiated that the languages which he would later dub "Nilo-Hamitic" were in fact
[20]
Nilotic languages, with numerous similarities in vocabulary to other Nilotic languages.

Leo Reinisch (1909) had already proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic, while urging their more distant affinity with Egyptian and
Semitic. However, his suggestion found little acceptance. Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup,
and included Hausa (a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. Finally, Joseph Greenberg's 1950 work led
to the widespread rejection of "Hamitic" as a language category by linguists.
Greenberg refuted Meinhof's linguistic theories, and rejected the use of racial and
social evidence. In dismissing the notion of a separate "Nilo-Hamitic" language
category in particular, Greenberg was "returning to a view widely held a half century
earlier." He consequently rejoined Meinhof's so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages with
their appropriate Nilotic siblings.[13] He also added (and sub-classified) the Chadic
languages, and proposed the new name Afroasiatic for the family. Almost all
scholars have accepted this classification as the new and continued consensus.

Greenberg's model was fully developed in his book The Languages of Africa (1963),
in which he reassigned most of Meinhof's additions to Hamitic to other language
families, notably Nilo-Saharan. Following Isaac Schapera and rejecting Meinhof, he
classified the Hottentot language as a member of the Central Khoisan languages. To
Khoisan he also added the Tanzanian Hadza and Sandawe, though this view remains Distribution of the Afroasiatic/Hamito-
controversial since some scholars consider these languages to be linguistic Semitic languages in Africa
isolates.[21][22] Despite this, Greenberg's model remains the basis for modern
classifications of languages spoken in Africa, and the Hamitic category (and its
extension to Nilo-Hamitic) has no part in this.[22]

Since the three traditional branches of the Hamitic languages (Berber, Cushitic and Egyptian) have not been shown to form an
exclusive (monophyletic) phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term
ger Afroasiatic family.[23]
in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an independent subgroup of the lar

In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that what had previously been known as Western Cushitic is an independent branch of Afroasiatic,
suggesting for it the new nameOmotic. This proposal and name have met with widespread acceptance.

Several scholars, including Harold Fleming andRobert Hetzron, have since questioned the traditional inclusion of Beja in Cushitic.

Glottolog does not accept that the inclusion or even unity of Omotic has been established, nor that of Ongota or the unclassified
Kujarge. It therefore splits off the following groups as small families: South Omotic, Mao, Dizoid, Gonga–Gimojan (North Omotic
apart from the preceding),Ongota, Kujarge.

Subgrouping
Little agreement exists on thesubgrouping of the five or six branches of Afroasiatic: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and
Omotic. However, Christopher Ehret (1979), Harold Fleming (1981), and Joseph Greenberg (1981) all agree that the Omotic branch
split from the rest first.

Otherwise:

Paul Newman (1980) groups Berber with Chadic and Egyptian with Semitic, while questioning the inclusion of
Omotic in Afroasiatic. Rolf Theil (2006) concurs with the exclusion of Omotic, but does not otherwise address the
structure of the family.[24]
Harold Fleming (1981) divides non-Omotic Afroasiatic, or "Erythraean", into three groups, Cushitic, Semitic, and
Chadic-Berber-Egyptian. He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed
Ongota as a new third branch of Erythraean. He thus divided Afroasiatic into two major branches, Omotic and
Erythraean, with Erythraean consisting of three sub-branches, Cushitic, Chadic-Berber-Egyptian-Semitic-Beja, and
Ongota.
Like Harold Fleming, Christopher Ehret (1995: 490) divides Afroasiatic into two branches, Omotic and Erythrean. He
divides Omotic into two branches, North Omotic and South Omotic. He divides Erythrean into Cushitic, comprising
Beja, Agaw, and East-South Cushitic, and North Erythrean, comprising Chadic and "Boreafrasian." According to his
classification, Boreafrasian consists of Egyptian, Berber
, and Semitic.
Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova (1995) group Berber with Semitic and Chadic with Egyptian. They split up Cushitic
into five or more independent branches of Afroasiatic, viewing Cushitic as aSprachbund rather than a language
family.
Igor M. Diakonoff (1996) subdivides Afroasiatic in two, grouping Berber, Cushitic, and Semitic together as East-West
 Proposed Afroasiatic sub-divisions
Greenberg (1963) Newman (1980) Fleming (post-1981) Ehret (1995)

Semitic Berber–Chadic Omotic Omotic

Egyptian Egypto-Semitic Erythraean
North Omotic
Berber Cushitic
Cushitic South Omotic
Cushitic (excludes Omotic) Ongota Erythrean
Northern Cushitic Non-Ethiopian
(equals Beja) Cushitic
Chadic
Central Cushitic Beja
Berber
Eastern Cushitic Agaw
Egyptian
Western Cushitic East–South Cushitic
(equals Omotic) Semitic
Southern Cushitic Beja Eastern Cushitic
Chadic Southern Cushitic
North Erythrean

Chadic
Boreafrasian

Egyptian
Berber
Semitic

Orel & Stobova (1995) Diakonoff (1996) Bender (1997) Militarev (2000)

Berber–Semitic East–West Afrasian Omotic North Afrasian

Chadic–Egyptian Chadic
Berber African North Afrasian
Omotic Macro-Cushitic
Cushitic
Beja Chado-Berber
Semitic Berber
Agaw Egyptian
North–South Afrasian Cushitic
Sidamic Semitic
Semitic
East Lowlands Chadic South Afrasian
Rift Egyptian
Omotic
(excludes Omotic) Cushitic

Afrasian (ESA), and Chadic with Egyptian as North-South Afrasian (NSA). He excludes Omotic from Afroasiatic.
Lionel Bender (1997) groups Berber, Cushitic, and Semitictogether as "Macro-Cushitic". He regards Chadic and
Omotic as the branches of Afroasiatic most remote from the others.
Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis oflexicostatistics, groups Berber with Chadic and both more distantly with
Semitic, as against Cushitic and Omotic. He places Ongota in South Omotic.

Position among the world's languages

Afroasiatic is one of the four major language families spoken in Africa identified by Joseph Greenberg in his book The Languages of
Africa (1963). It is one of the few whose speech area is transcontinental, with languages from Afroasiatic's Semitic branch also
spoken in the Middle East and Europe.

There are no generally accepted relations between Afroasiatic and any other language family. However, several proposals grouping
Afroasiatic with one or more other language families have been made. The best-known of these are the following:

Hermann Möller (1906) argued for a relation betweenSemitic and the Indo-European languages. This proposal was
accepted by a few linguists (e.g.Holger Pedersen and Louis Hjelmslev). (For a fuller account, seeIndo-Semitic
languages.) However, the theory has little currency today, although most linguists do not deny the existence of
 grammatical similarities between both families (such as grammatical gender , noun-adjective agreement, three-way
number distinction, and vowel alternation as a means of derivation).
Apparently influenced by Möller (a colleague of his at theUniversity of Copenhagen), Holger Pedersen included
Hamito-Semitic (the term replaced by Afroasiatic) in his proposed Nostratic macro-family (cf. Pedersen 1931:336–
338), also included the Indo-European,Uralic, Altaic, Yukaghir languages, and Dravidian Languages. This inclusion
was retained by subsequent Nostraticists, starting withVladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky.
Joseph Greenberg (2000–2002) did not reject a relationship of Afroasiatic to these other languages, but he
considered it more distantly related to them than they were to each other, grouping instead these other languages in
a separate macro-family, which he called Eurasiatic, and to which he addedChukotian, Gilyak, Korean, Japanese-
Ryukyuan, Eskimo–Aleut, and Ainu.
Most recently, Sergei Starostin's school has accepted Eurasiatic as a subgroup of Nostratic, with Afroasiatic,
Dravidian and Kartvelian in Nostratic outside of Eurasiatic. The even larger Borean super-family contains Nostratic
as well as Dené-Caucasian and Austric.

Date of Afroasiatic
The earliest written evidence of an Afroasiatic language is an Ancient Egyptian inscription
dated to c. 3400 BC (5,400 years ago).[25] Symbols on Gerzean (Naqada II) pottery 0:00

resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs date back to c. 4000 BC, suggesting an earlier possible
Speech sample in the Semitic
dating. This gives us a minimum date for the age of Afroasiatic. However, Ancient Egyptian Neo-Aramaic language, a
is highly divergent from Proto-Afroasiatic (Trombetti 1905: 1–2), and considerable time descendant of Old Aramaic
must have elapsed in between them. Estimates of the date at which the Proto-Afroasiatic
language was spoken vary widely. They fall within a range between approximately 7,500
BC (9,500 years ago), and approximately 16,000 BC (18,000 years ago). According to Igor M. Diakonoff (1988: 33n), Proto-
Afroasiatic was spoken c. 10,000 BC. Christopher Ehret (2002: 35–36) asserts that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 11,000 BC at the
latest, and possibly as early as c. 16,000 BC. These dates are older than those associated with other
proto-languages.

Afroasiatic Urheimat
The term Afroasiatic Urheimat (Urheimat meaning "original homeland" in German) refers to
the hypothetical place where Proto-Afroasiatic language speakers lived in a single linguistic
community, or complex of communities, before this original language dispersed
geographically and divided into distinct languages. Afroasiatic languages are today primarily
spoken in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel. Their
distribution seems to have been influenced by the Sahara pump operating over the last 10,000
years.

There is no agreement when or where the original homeland of this language family existed.
Proposed locations include North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Eastern Map showing one of the
Sahara,[26][27][28][29][30] and the Levant.[31][32] proposed Afroasiatic
Urheimat

Similarities in grammar and syntax

Widespread (though not universal) features of the Afroasiatic languages include:

A set of emphatic consonants, variously realized as glottalized, pharyngealized, or implosive.

VSO typology with SVO tendencies.
A two-gender system in the singular, with the feminine marked by the sound /t/.
All Afroasiatic subfamilies show evidence of acausative affix s.
Semitic, Berber, Cushitic (including Beja), and Chadic support possessive suffixes.
Nisba derivation in -j (earlier Egyptian) or -ī (Semitic)[33]
Morphology in which words inflect by changes within the root (vowel changes orgemination) as well as with prefixes
and suffixes.
One of the
most Verbal paradigms in several Afroasiatic languages:

remarkable Language → Arabic Coptic Kabyle Somali Beja Hausa

shared ↓ Number Verb → katab mou afeg
features
Meaning → write die fly come eat drink
among the
1 ʼaktubu timou ttafgeɣ imaadaa tamáni ina shan
Afroasiatic
languages 2f taktubīna temou tamtínii kina shan
tettafgeḍ
is the singular 2m kmou timaadaa tamtíniya kana shan
prefixing taktubu
3f smou tettafeg tamtíni tana shan
verb
3m yaktubu fmou yettafeg yimaadaa tamíni yana shan
conjugation
(see the 2
taktubāni
table at the dual 3f
start of this
3m yaktubāni
section),
1 naktubu tənmou nettafeg nimaadnaa támnay muna shan
with a
distinctive 2m taktubūna tettafgem
tetənmou timaadaan támteena kuna shan
pattern of plural 2f taktubna tettafgemt
prefixes 3m yaktubūna ttafgen
beginning semou yimaadaan támeen suna shan
3f yaktubna ttafgent
with /ʔ t n
y/, and in
particular a pattern whereby third-singular masculine /y-/ is opposed to third-singular feminine and second-singular /t-/.

According to Ehret (1996), tonal languages appear in the Omotic and Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, as well as in certain Cushitic
languages. The Semitic, Berber and Egyptian branches generally do not use tones
phonemically.

Shared vocabulary
The following are some examples of Afroasiatic cognates, including ten pronouns, three
nouns, and three verbs. 0:00

Speech sample in Shilha

Source: Christopher Ehret, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic
(Berber branch)
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

Note: Ehret does not make use of Berber in his etymologies,

stating (1995: 12): "the kind of extensive reconstruction of 0:00
proto-Berber lexicon that might help in sorting through
alternative possible etymologies is not yet available." The Speech sample in Somali
Berber cognates here are taken from previous version of table (Cushitic branch)
in this article and need to be completed and referenced.

Abbreviations: NOm = 'North Omotic', SOm = 'South Omotic'.

MSA = 'Modern South Arabian', PSC = 'Proto-Southern 0:00
Cushitic', PSom-II = 'Proto-Somali, stage 2'. masc. =
'masculine', fem. = 'feminine', sing. = 'singular', pl. = 'plural'. Speech sample in Arabic
1s. = 'first person singular', 2s. = 'second person singular'. (Semitic branch)

Symbols: Following Ehret (1995: 70), a caron ˇ over a vowel

indicates rising tone, and a circumflex ^ over a vowel indicates falling tone. V indicates a
vowel of unknown quality. Ɂ indicates a glottal stop. * indicates reconstructed forms based on
comparison of related languages.
Proto-Afroasiatic Omotic Cushitic Chadic Egyptian Semitic Berber
*Ɂân- / *Ɂîn- or
*ân- / *în- ‘I’ *in- ‘I’ (Maji ink, *ʲānak nek / nec ‘I,
*Ɂâni ‘I’ *nV ‘I’ *Ɂn ‘I’
(independent (NOm)) 'I' me’
pronoun)
*i ‘me,
*i or *yi ‘me, my’ i ‘I, me, my’ -i, *-aʲ (1s. inu / nnu / iw
*i or *yi ‘my’ my’ *-i ‘me, my’
(bound) (Ari (SOm)) suffix) ‘my’
(bound)
*nona /
*Ɂǎnn- / *Ɂǐnn- nekni /
*nuna / *Ɂǎnn- / inn, *ʲānan
or *ǎnn- / *ǐnn- — *Ɂnn ‘we’ necnin /
*nina *Ɂǐnn- ‘we’ ‘we’
‘we’ neccin ‘we’
(NOm)
netta "he"
*Ɂânt- / *Ɂînt- or
*int- ‘you’ *Ɂânt- ‘you’ nt-, *ʲānt- (keyy / cek
*ânt- / *înt- ‘you’ — *Ɂnt ‘you’ (sing.)
(sing.) (sing.) ‘you’ (sing.) "you" (masc.
(sing.)
sing.))
*ku, *ka ‘you’ *ku ‘your’ *ka, *ku inek / nnek / -
-k (2s. -ka (2s. masc.
(masc. sing., — (masc. sing.) (masc. k "your"
masc. suffix) suffix) (Arabic)
bound) (PSC) sing.) (masc. sing.)
*ki ‘you’ -ṯ (fem. -ki (2s. fem. -m / nnem /
*ki ‘you’ (fem. *ki ‘your’ (fem.
— (fem. sing. suffix, sing. suffix) inem "your"
sing., bound) sing.)
sing.) < *ki) (Arabic) (fem. sing.)
*kun
*kūna ‘you’ *kuna ‘your’ -ṯn, *-ṯin *-kn ‘you, your’ -kent, kennint
— ‘you’
(plural, bound) (pl.) (PSC) ‘you’ (pl.) (fem. pl.) "you" (fem. pl.)
(pl.)
sw, *suw
-s / nnes /
*si, *isi ‘he, she, *Ɂusu ‘he’, ‘he, him’, *-šɁ ‘he’, *-sɁ
*is- ‘he’ *sV ‘he’ ines
it’ *Ɂisi ‘she’ sy, *siʲ ‘she, ‘she’ (MSA)
"his/her/its"
her’
mā (Arabic,
*ma- ma? /
*ma, *mi (interr. *mi, *ma m ‘what?’, Hebrew) / mu?
*ma, *mi ‘what?’ ‘what?’ mayen? /
root) ‘what?’ ‘who?’ (Assyrian)
(NOm) min? "what?"
‘what?’
mamek? /
*wä / *wɨ *wa
*wa, *wi ‘what?’ *w- ‘what?’ wy ‘how ...!’ mamec? /
‘what?’ (Agaw) ‘who?’
amek? "how?
*d-m-
*dam- *dm / dǝma
*dîm- / *dâm- *dîm- / *dâm- ‘blood’ i-dm-i ‘red idammen
‘blood’ (Assyrian) / dom
‘blood’ ‘red’ (West linen’ "bloods"
(Gonga) (Hebrew) ‘blood’
Chadic)
*itsim- *itsan or *isan *sin sn, *san aẖ (Hebrew) uma / gʷma
*îts ‘brother’
‘brother’ ‘brother’ ‘brother’ ‘brother’ "brother" "brother"
*ism (Arabic) /
*sum(ts)- smi ‘to
*sǔm / *sǐm- *sǔm / *sǐm- *ṣǝm shǝma isen / isem
‘name’ report,
‘name’ ‘name’ ‘name’ (Assyrian) "name"
(NOm) announce’
‘name’
litsʼ- ‘to
*alǝsi ns, *nīs
*-lisʼ- ‘to lick’ lick’ (Dime — *lsn ‘tongue’ iles "tongue"
‘tongue’ ‘tongue’
(SOm))
*-umaaw- / *- *mwt / mawta
*mǝtǝ
*-maaw- ‘to die’ — am-w(t)- ‘to die’ mwt ‘to die’ (Assyrian) ‘to mmet "to die"
‘to die’
(PSom-II) die’
bin- ‘to
*mǐn- / *mǎn- *bn ‘to *bnn / bani
build,
*-bǐn- ‘to build, to ‘house’; man- build’; (Assyrian) / *bn(?) (esk "to
create’ —
create; house’ ‘to create’ *bǝn- bana (Hebrew) build")
(Dime
(Beja) ‘house’ ‘to build’
(SOm))
There are two etymological dictionaries of Afroasiatic, one by Christopher Ehret, and one by Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova. The
two dictionaries disagree on almost everything. The following table contains the thirty roots or so (out of thousands) that represent a
fragile consensus of present research:

Proto-Afroasiatic
Number Meaning Berber Chadic Cushitic Egyptian Omotic Semitic
Form
1 *ʔab father ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
2 (ʔa-)bVr bull ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
3 (ʔa-)dVm red, blood ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
4 *(ʔa-)dVm land, field, soil ✔ ✔
5 ʔa-pay- mouth ✔ ✔ ✔
house,
6 ʔigar/ *ḳʷar- ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
enclosure
7 *ʔil- eye ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
8 (ʔi-)sim- name ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
9 *ʕayn- eye ✔ ✔
10 *baʔ- go ✔ ✔ ✔
11 *bar- son ✔ ✔ ✔
12 *gamm- mane, beard ✔ ✔ ✔
13 *gVn cheek, chin ✔ ✔
14 *gʷarʕ- throat ✔ ✔ ✔
15 *gʷinaʕ- hand ✔ ✔
16 *kVn- co-wife ✔ ✔ ✔
17 *kʷaly kidney ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
18 *ḳa(wa)l-/ *qʷar- to say, call ✔ ✔
19 *ḳas- bone ✔ ✔ ✔
20 *libb heart ✔ ✔ ✔
21 *lis- tongue ✔ ✔ ✔
22 *maʔ- water *aman *aman ✔ ✔
23 *mawVt- to die ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
24 *sin- tooth ✔ ✔ ✔
25 *siwan- know ✔ ✔ ✔
26 *inn- I, we ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
27 *-k- thou ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
28 *zwr seed ✔ ✔
29 *ŝVr root ✔ ✔
to sleep,
30 *šun ✔ ✔
dream

Etymological bibliography
Some of the main sources for Afroasiatic etymologies include:

Cohen, Marcel. 1947. Essai comparatif sur le vocabulaire et la phonétique du chamito-sémitique.

Paris: Champion.
 Diakonoff, Igor M. et al. 1993–1997. "Historical-comparative vocabulary of Afrasian",St. Petersburg Journal of
African Studies 2–6.
Ehret, Christopher. 1995. Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): V owels, Tone, Consonants, and
Vocabulary (= University of California Publications in Linguistics126). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Orel, Vladimir E. and Olga V. Stolbova. 1995. Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary: Materials for a
Reconstruction. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-10051-2.

See also
Borean languages
Indo-European languages
Indo-Semitic languages
Languages of Africa
Languages of Asia
Languages of Europe
Nostratic languages
Proto-Afroasiatic language

References
1. Sands, Bonny (2009). "Africa’s Linguistic Diversity". Language and Linguistics Compass 3/2 (2009): 559–580,
10.1111/j.1749-818x.2008.00124.x
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Afro-Asiatic" (http://glottolog.org/resource/l
anguoid/id/afro1255). Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History .
3. Katzner, Kenneth (2002). The Languages of the World(https://www.google.com/books?id=Lm8LFegafGIC&pg=PA2
7). Routledge. p. 27. ISBN 1134532881. Retrieved 20 December 2017.
4. Robert Hetzron, "Afroasiatic Languages" in Bernard Comrie,The World's Major Languages, 2009,
ISBN 113426156X, p. 545
5. Ethnologue family tree for Afroasiatic languages(http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=52-16)
6. Summary by language family(http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/family)
7. https://www.ethnologue.com/language/ara
8. Ethnologue - Hausa (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=hau)
9. Dekel, Nurit (2014). Colloquial Israeli Hebrew: A Corpus-based Survey(https://books.google.com/books?id=Mj_oBQ
AAQBAJ). De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-037725-5.
10. "Tamazight, Central Atlas"(https://www.ethnologue.com/language/tzm). Ethnologue. Retrieved 18 October 2017.
11. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald;Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Northeastern Neo-
Aramaic". Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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12. Beyer, Klaus; John F. Healey (trans.) (1986). The Aramaic Language: its distribution andubdivisions.
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Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. p. 44.ISBN 3-525-53573-2.
13. Merritt, Ruhlen (1991).A Guide to the World's Languages: Classification(https://www.google.com/books?id=mYwm
DE3f6wUC&pg=PA78#v=onepage&q&f=false). Stanford University Press. pp. 76 & 87.ISBN 0804718946.
14. Gregersen, Edgar A. (1977).Language in Africa: An Introductory Survey(https://www.google.com/books?id=w4lytW
v1JKAC&pg=PA116#v=onepage&q&f=false). Taylor & Francis. p. 116.ISBN 0677043805. Retrieved 1 September
2016.
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=IiXVqyEkPKcC&pg=PA21#v=onepage&q&f=false). Peeters Publishers. pp. 21–22.ISBN 90-429-0815-7.
16. The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 8; Volume 22 (https://www.google.com/books?id=6-lMAQAAIAAJ).
Encyclopædia Britannica. 1998. p. 722.ISBN 0-85229-633-9.
17. Harrassowitz Verlag - The Harrassowitz Publishing House (http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/pcgi/a.cgi?ausgabe=in
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18. Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World's Languages: Classification
, Stanford University Press, 1991, pp. 80–1
19. Kevin Shillington, Encyclopedia of African History, CRC Press, 2005, p.797
20. Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World's Languages, (Stanford University Press: 1991), p.109
21. Sands, Bonny E. (1998) 'Eastern and Southern African Khoisan: evaluating claims of distant linguistic relationships.'
Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung 14. Köln: Köppe.
22. Ruhlen, p.117
23. Everett Welmers, William (1974).African Language Structures(https://www.google.com/books?id=hCxpK-CkdgYC&
pg=PA16#v=onepage&q&f=false). University of California Press. p. 16.ISBN 0520022106.
24. Is Omotic Afroasiatic? (In Norwegian)(http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iln/LING2110/v07/THEIL%20Is%20Omoti
c%20Afroasiatic.pdf)
25. Earliest Egyptian Glyphs(http://www.archaeology.org/9903/newsbriefs/egypt.html)
26. Blench R (2006) Archaeology, Language, and the African Past, Rowman Altamira,ISBN 0-7591-0466-2, ISBN 978-
0-7591-0466-2, https://books.google.com/books?id=esFy3Po57A8C
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Letters of SCIENCE 306, no. 5702, p. 1680doi:10.1126/science.306.5702.1680c(https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscienc
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28. Bernal M (1987) Black Athena: the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, Rutgers University Press,
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3655-3, ISBN 978-0-8135-3655-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=yFLm_M_OdK4C
29. Bender ML (1997), Upside Down Afrasian, Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 50, pp. 19-34
30. Militarev A (2005) Once more about glottochronology and comparative method: the Omotic-Afrasian case, Аспек ты
компаративистики - 1 (Aspects of comparative linguistics - 1)(http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/fleming.pdf). FS S.
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31. Quantitative Approaches to Linguistic Diversity: Commemorating the Centenary of the Birth of Morris Swadesh
(http
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33. Carsten Peust, "On the subgrouping of Afroasiatic"(http://www.peust.de/2012_afroasiatic.pdf), LingAeg 20 (2012),
221-251 (p. 243).

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Bender, Lionel et al. 2003. Selected Comparative-Historical Afro-Asiatic Studies in Memory of Igor M. Diakonoff.
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Bomhard, Alan R. 1996.Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis.Signum.
Diakonoff, Igor M. 1988. Afrasian Languages. Moscow: Nauka.
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Diakonoff, Igor M. 1998. "The earliest Semiticsociety: Linguistic data."Journal of Semitic Studies43, 209.
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External links
Afro-Asiatic at the Linguist List MultiTree Project (not functional as of 2014): Genealogical trees attributed to
Delafosse 1914, Greenberg 1950–1955, Greenberg 1963, Fleming 1976, Hodge 1976, Orel & Stolbova 1995,
Diakonoff 1996–1998, Ehret 1995–2000, Hayward 2000, Militarev 2005, Blench 2006, and Fleming 2006
Afro-Asiatic and Semitic genealogical trees, presented by Alexander Militarev at his talk "Genealogical classification
of Afro-Asiatic languages according to the latest data" at the conference on the 70th anniversary of V.M. Illich-
Svitych, Moscow, 2004; short annotations of the talks given there(in Russian)
The prehistory of a dispersal: the Proto-Afrasian (Afroasiatic) farming lexicon , by Alexander Militarev in "Examining
the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis", eds. .PBellwood & C. Renfrew. (McDonald Institute Monographs.)
Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2002, p. 135-50.
Once More About Glottochronology And The Comparative Method: The Omotic-Afrasian case , by Alexander
Militarev in "Aspects of Comparative Linguistics", .v1. Moscow: RSUH Publishers, 2005, pp. 339–408.
Root Extension And Root Formation In Semitic And Afrasian , by Alexander Militarev in "Proceedings of the
Barcelona Symposium on comparative Semitic", 19-20/11/2004. Aula Orientalis 23/1-2, 2005, pp. 83–129.
Akkadian-Egyptian lexical matches, by Alexander Militarev in "Papers on Semitic and Afroasiatic Linguistics in Honor
of Gene B. Gragg." Ed. by Cynthia L. Miller . Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 60. Chicago: The Oriental
Institute, 2007, p. 139-145.
A comparison of Orel-Stolbova's and Ehret's Afro-Asiatic reconstructions
"Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?"by Rolf Theil (2006)
NACAL The North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics, now in its 35th year
Afro-Asiatic webpage of Roger Blench (with family tree).

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